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Advice on Link Building?

I know webmasters shouldn't focus on link building but unfortunately there are some types of content that doesn't get shared as much as other. And for content to go viral, it ain't that easy and it's almost impossible in some smaller niches where you don't have the volume to go "viral".

That said I know about the common link building techniques. I know I can submit guest posts but when you're competing with websites that have over 10,000 backlinks, there is no way I'm going to get close to this with guest posting and commenting on other blogs.

One way I found for getting backlinks is to publish interviews. Most of the time, people/businesses you interview like to link to this type of content. Publishing value-added content about other businesses' products or services may get some backlinks in return but not that often.

So other than that, can some of you share some "out-of-the-box" link building strategies?

6 Responses

Another idea is to reach out to the websites that you would like to get links from and ask what they're interested in seeing. An open ended question like, "What should I build?" probably won't yield great results, but if you have a couple of ideas and ask a site owner if they're interested, they'll a) let you know if that's a good idea before you even build it, b) probably add some information that will make your new content richer, and c) will already be engaged and more likely to link to your content once it's built.

If you have the content, the links will become easier to find. Yes it's a daunting task going up against the likes of what you're suggesting, but you'd be surprised. Sites with thousands of links like that don't always win on sheer numbers alone. In fact, sometimes those numbers hurt them. It all depends where those links are coming from of course... but I digress.

The interviews are a great idea, keep that up. Maybe you can publish a survey and offer a nifty prize, then at the end of the survey post your findings. Keep it relevant to your niche and people will be interested in your charts/graphs/stats. This could gain you a whole bevy of links.

At MozCon Wil Reynolds talked about creating one infographic that changed his life. It was shared all over the stinkin' place and picked up by all sorts of media. All it takes is a hit like this and you'll be off and running quicker than you realized was possible.

Good thread. This is what we are all striving to do.. (Or at least what we SHOULD all be striving to do. There are some who are still unsure what it means to be an SEO/inbound marketer in this day and age.)

How does infographic work for an ecommerce website? We don't have a blog. If we create and distribute an infographic, links would be pointing to infographic url right? such as url.com/img.jpg. How do we get links to the home page instead of infographic image url?

There's no reason you can't have a blog. I don't care if you sell kitty litter, toiletries, or butcher tools. Everything is blog-worthy. Become the source on why your product is useful. What new products just came out. Why your store is the best resource to get them from. And what exactly you can do with this product. Tie all of these together and you've got yourself a ton of link building opportunities.

And yes, host your infographic on your domain and spread them out to places like visual.ly and other infographic sites.

Why do you need the link pointed to your homepage? What difference does that make? The link juice passes to your domain no matter what directory/page/image internally it's pointed at. And the brand is then furthered. Drop your URL in the description or small at the very bottom of the infographic if you'd like and you might get some direct referrals.. But really as a link-building/SEO tactic the exact route of your linked content doesn't need to be all to your home page.

As EGOL said, Build an info site with a store! DO THAT!! You will succeed.

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